Nicky Hayden Hoping For Improvement
Paul Carruthers | April 13, 2014
Nicky Hayden would have loved nothing more than to come to Circuit of the Americas – one of his two home GPs – and put on a good show for his fans. But he’s also a realist. Based on off-season testing and the opening round of the MotoGP World Championship in Qatar, Hayden didn’t come to Texas expecting a miracle and so far there hasn’t been one with the 2006 MotoGP World Champion qualifying 14th yesterday and hoping to improve on that in today’s race.
“I honestly thought the flowing sections of this track would be easier than they have been today,” Hayden said. “I struggled through there last year and I thought it would be much more easy on the Honda, but that hasn’t really been the case and we have also had some electronic issues that have cost us valuable time. It is a shame that our home GP isn’t going to plan at the moment, but looking on the bright side we improved by a full second in qualifying and we have to keep working hard in the warm-up tomorrow to try and find a bit more. Hopefully we can do that and give the fans here a better show in the race.”
Hayden ended this morning’s warm-up session exactly where he qualified – 14th and 2.5 seconds off pole sitter Marc Marquez’s pace.
Paul Carruthers | Editor
Paul Carruthers took over as the editor of Cycle News in 1993 after serving as associate editor since starting his career at the publication in 1985. Carruthers has covered every facet of the sport in his near-28-year tenure at America’s Daily Motorcycle News Source.
